Food allergies have made parents a little nutty (Column)

By Renee Moilanen, Torrance Daily Breeze

Posted:
04/29/2013 03:48:09 PM EDT

Three parents in a class of 15 at my son's school say their children had severe nut allergies. A startling 20 percent, presented with a peanut butter chocolate tart, would have a serious reaction, despite that only 1 to 2 percent of Americans have actual food allergies, and only 9,500 hospitalizations a year result from nut reactions. (Deb Lindsey)

My son's third birthday party was a mishmash of celebratory food complicated by a classroom allergy list that I'm surprised hasn't made the Annals of Medicine.

Nuts, obviously, were out. His classroom — like an increasing number of school environments — is nut-free, which means no peanut butter, almond flavorings, walnutty goodness or deliciously crunchy chocolate bars.

Then, there were the individual allergies. This girl can't eat eggs. Another can't have dairy. One boy is on a gluten-free diet while others must avoid strawberries, chocolate, penicillin, grass, long exposure to the sun, dust, soap, healthy vegetables, cleaning up their toys, putting away their dishes after dinner and basically anything else you can think of.

How his teachers keep track of the extensive allergy list is a wonder to me. I ended up going with soy ice cream bars and prayed that no one had a soy allergy. It wasn't my kid's first choice but chocolate cupcakes were a risk we couldn't take.

But as I watched the poor girl who had to eat graham crackers as if that's some sort of treat, I began to feel sorry for these kids. There's no doubt that some of the kids experience reactions to certain foods — about 3 to 8 percent of children have food intolerances — but only 1 to 2 percent have actual food allergies, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Advertisement

And among those kids, a much smaller population has the true hair-raising, call 9-1-1, break-out-the-epinephrine type of allergy. Most get a slight tingling in their mouths or develop skin rashes - not pleasant, but not deadly.

I began to have suspicions about the classroom's true allergy prevalence at back-to-school night, when the discussion turned to allergies and three parents in a class of 15 said their children had severe nut allergies. Three out of 15. A startling 20 percent.

Each year, there are only about 9,500 hospitalizations in the entire country related to children with severe food allergies. Is it possible that most of them came from my son's preschool class? Where were the medical investigators?

And that was just the peanut allergies. Even more children had other food allergies, at least according to their moms and dads.

Parents, I recognize, can get panicky when it comes to their children's health. But most kids grow out of the food sensitivities they have as tots and go on to lead perfectly normal egg-filled, dairy-loving, nut-consuming lives. If, that is, their parents can relax a little.

When my son was an infant, he broke out in a red rash around his mouth every time he ate eggs. Turns out, it's pretty common for babies to have reactions to egg whites, and most outgrow the sensitivity before kindergarten. So I could choose to panic every time my kid came near an egg, or I could help build his immunity. There was no way I was having a kid with egg allergies - have you seen how many foods contain eggs? — so I chose the latter.

Every few weeks, I'd give the kid an egg. After a while, his body adjusted and soon he was gobbling them down without so much as a pink spot. I'd spared his teachers one more allergic child to worry about and saved the boy a lifetime of eating graham crackers at birthday parties.

I understand this approach won't work for the sliver of the population prone to anaphylaxis. But I'll bet that most of the children in my son's preschool class would do just fine nibbling some foods off the allergy list.

Which would allow them to enjoy a proper peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and chocolate cupcake every once in a while. And let my son celebrate his birthday with something more delicious than soy ice cream.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of Nashoba Publishing. So keep it civil.